After 30 Years, Times Square Rebirth Is Complete

“So often, people say New York can’t build large-scale projects anymore,” said Lynne B. Sagalynn, a professor of real estate finance at Columbia University and the author of “Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon.”
But, Professor Sagalynn said, “Times Square is an example of how a city was able to think on a grand scale and carry it out.”
“It can take a decade or two for the complete vision to become a reality,” she continued. “But it happened here.”
Success is evident. Crime is down significantly from the days when pimps, prostitutes, drug addicts and dope pushers prowled Times Square and the Deuce, as that stretch of 42nd Street was known. The number of tourists is up 74 percent since 1993, to an estimated 36.5 million last year, and attendance at Broadway shows has soared to nearly 12 million.
Morgan Stanley, Allianz Global Investors, Viacom and Condé Nast now make their corporate homes there. Retailers are paying rents as high as $1,400 a square foot, second only to those on chic stretches of Fifth and Madison Avenues.
And while many billboards in Times Square were blank in 1979, today the area is a kaleidoscope of moving images depicting financial institutions, automakers and fashion houses, with the best spots on 1 Times Square’s facade commanding as much as $4 million a year in rent.
“The irony is that this place represents in many ways the epitome of free-market capitalism,” said Tim Tompkins, president of the Times Square Alliance. “But its transformation is due more to government intervention than just about any other development in the country.”

　「この場所があらゆる意味で自由資本主義の権化として表象していながら、その変容は我が国の他のどの開発よりも政府の介入によっていることは皮肉なことだ」

　30年かぁ。やっぱり街を変えるのにはそのくらいの時間とお金と後ろ盾が必要なんですね。あ〜ＮＹ行きたい行きたい×100。